Bechuanaland: Walking the Tightrope

By camel and dugout canoe, through
bleak lion country and rich tobacco fields, the electorate of
Bechuanaland proceeded to the polls. Some were red-faced Afrikaner
farmers in sports shirts and veldskoen; others were naked Kalahari
bushmen, whose ways have not changed since they learned to paint on
rocks 15,000 years ago. At the polling placein some cases a tidy
brick schoolhouse, in others a thatch-roofed hut beneath a twisted
mopane treeeach voter received a handful of col ored, coin-size
counters representing the candidates of five political parties. Cynics
called it "the...